Comment by ColinWright
1 day ago
Personally I find an announcement like the one linked more helpful and useful to create a context, rather than linking directly to the project.
Links to the actual project are in the submitted post, so you can get an overview before then being directed to the project itself.
As always YMMV, indeed, YMWV, but I like seeing the announcement giving the context rather than a bare pointer to the project.
... and while I appreciate the rationale behind it, I'm always saddened when a carefully chosen link that suits the way I think, giving and overview and a context with links to the projects, is then over-written by the direct link to the project that doesn't give a sense of why it's interesting or relevant.
But as the Man in Black says in The Princess Bride: "Get used to disappointment".
We can have our cake and eat it.
The guidelines are clear that the original/canonical source is what we want on HN:
Please submit the original source. If a post reports on something found on another site, submit the latter.
But you're welcome to post a comment with links to other sources that give the extra information and context, and we can pin it to the top of the thread, or do what I've done here and put them in the top text.
We won't agree on this.
I understand the rationale, and as someone who moderates other communities I can totally understand why this is administered as a blanket policy. Having said that, it does sometimes result in what I think of as sub-optimal situations where information is unnecessarily lost or obscured.
In particular, adding a link to the original post, as you have done here, is likely to be of minimal value. People will click on the headline link, wonder what it's about or why it's "news", and close the window. On the other hand, clicking through first to the post means people will see the context, then those who are interested will click through to the project site(s). I've done this analysis in other contexts and found that the decision tree for engagement and user-information is in favour of linking to the post, not the project.
But as I say, I understand your position, and in the end, it's not my forum, not my community, and not my choice.
1 reply →
so just to confirm, this HN submission [ 1] should have linked to this pdf of the paper [2] and put the article [3] that is the current link for the post as a comment?
1 reply →